As the Twin Cities embarks on the next iteration of bike share, it’s important to note a few things as it relates to current plans. In September, Nice Ride Minnesota let an RFP for an operator to come into the Twin Cities and operate the current Nice Ride station-based system until 2010 – or the end of the useful life of current equipment. Additionally, proposers were asked to create for the Twin Cities a station-free (AKA dockless) bike share. Simply stated, station-free bike share allows bikes to be parked anywhere as defined by community parking rules and rent them from anywhere for $1 per half hour or hour depending on the provider. Full disclosure, I represent Spin, the San Francisco based station-free bike share company. We submitted a proposal – more on that later.
The RFP process yielded two finalists: Motivate and LimeBike. Both were asked to present to the public at Macalester College earlier this fall. At that meeting, Motivate stressed the need to be an exclusive provider in Minneapolis (including Park and Rec land), St. Paul, and the University of Minnesota. I’m going out on a bit of a limb here, but since Motivate has been in conversations with Nice Ride about this arrangement for several months, it could lead one to believe that they will be the chosen vendor. If this is the case, it may be a bit disingenuous to have created the RFP process if the outcome was pre-determined. At Spin, we submitted a proposal that was outside the boundaries of the RFP but one that we thought was best for the Twin Cities. We proposed to hire Nice Ride to maintain our fleet of bikes and move them around as needed. This would have resulted in Spin paying Nice Ride between 100 and 200 thousand dollars per year. We were far enough off the dime that we didn’t make it to the final two.
At the Macalester College presentation, Justin Ginsburgh, and Alex Vickers, both from Motivate, presented their plan for the Twin Cities. They pledged to keep 30% of the bikes in St. Paul through a phased rollout of thousands of bikes by 2020. Additionally, Mr. Ginsburgh, responding to a question about “why exclusivity?” He responded that without exclusivity, Motivate couldn’t sustain the system financially and it could fail.
As of this writing, Mssrs. Vickers and Ginsburgh are no longer with Motivate. Mr. Vickers has begun working at Social Bicycles (a Station-free company), and Mr. Ginsurgh has reportedly joined an airline – Jet Blue. Speaking outside the bounds of bike share equity, the uncertainty resulting from the departure of two of the main players in this theater should give us pause.
Station-free bikes in Seattle
One of the mainstays of creating and sustaining an equitable bike share system in the Twin Cities will be bike density – enough bikes in North Minneapolis, The East Side of St. Paul, Frogtown, and Rondo. Motivate has pledged 30% in St. Paul but no specific mention of the number of bikes in the aforementioned neighborhoods. Motivate plans to use their Station Based bikes (free of the station) in the station-free system, a very expensive choice. These bikes will cost them more than other providers by factor of as much as 5x. It will be critical for them to keep bikes in high traffic areas and forgo interest in less travelled areas – North Minneapolis, The East Side of St. Paul, Frogtown, and Rondo. If they have to promise to keep bikes in these areas, bike share equity will already be compromised. It will be more advantageous for the Twin Cities to have enough bikes at our disposal to adequately serve these communities
I believe that the Twin Cities, as many other cities in the country, will benefit from a permitting process that will allow multiple vendors to enter the market. Seattle, Washington DC**, Charlotte**, Los Angeles**, will benefit from the cities deciding, separate from Nice Ride Minnesota, what the next generation of bike share will look like in the Twin Cities. I won’t litigate this here as it has been discussed in an earlier Streets.mn post by Kate Lockhart.
So what does this mean for equity? Anthony Taylor has spoken eloquently about bike share in underserved communities. He has observed that “no one rides a bike in the Twin Cities.” Think about this. Minneapolis brags of nearly 5% mode share of people choosing to ride a bike to work each day. This means that 95% of Minneapolitans don’t ride a bike to work. There is much work to be done.
Beyond making bikes available to residents of underserved communities, we must create incentive programs, host social rides (Slow Roll), and encourage people to use bikes for transportation. The more bikes in the immediate community, the easier it will be to get people to ride them. With multiple vendors serving St. Paul (and the rest of the Twin Cities), we can serve many more people. It’s been said that the Twin Cities (St. Paul, Minneapolis and first ring suburbs) market can absorb as many as 30,000 to 40,000 bikes. One provider will be hard pressed to make this happen in the Metro much less in North Minneapolis, The East Side of St. Paul, Frogtown, and Rondo. Just preparing 40,000 bikes for service is a herculean effort. In this case, exclusivity is a barrier to bike share equity. To ensure an equitable program, the Metro players must insist on a program that will allow multiple vendors to serve our community.
** each of the asterisk cities have station-based bike share in place already.